Petrarch Vs Wyatt

Wyatt´s adaptation of Pertrarch
Wyatt in his imitation of Petrarch has omitted the description of the beauty of nature off the mistress. He preferred, instead, to provide the state of mind. In that sense, we can find Wyatt more egotistical. The difference between these two poems could be due to the fact that Wyatt was aware of different interpretations available for the Petrarch´s sonnet.Still, Wyatt may have based his interpretations on the commentaries of Alessandro Velutello, that investigated Petrarch´s love affair with Laura. Nonetheless, Wyatt´s “imitations”, or to say in other words adaptation, is really distinct to all the earlier translations of Petrarch´s sonnet. It is a virtually new poem base on an idea or image. “Whoso list to hunt” could be called rather an rebelliousversion 'Una Candida cerva sopra l'erba' (cxc) describes Petrarch's symbolic vision of a white hind, which appeared before him one spring morning and which he gazed at avidly until it tragically disappeared from the beautiful landscape just before noon. The inscriptions on the hind's collar bear witness to its inaccessibility: 'Nessun mi tocchi' and 'Libera farmi al mio Cesare parve' ('Touch me not'and 'It has pleased my lord to set me free'). The sonnet is open to a wide variety of interpretations, but all commentators naturally agree that, the white hind being Laura, it reflects a phase in Petrarch's protracted love for her. The atmosphere is dreamlike, the imagery picturesque, and the sentiment pathetic.

Wyatt converts Petrarch's contemplation of the hind into a prolonged account ofhunting. Far from doting on his 'diere' he has sickened of the 'vayne travaill'; and soon he advises others to abandon the pursuit of what is obviously a wayward court lady:

Who list her hount, I put him owte of dowbte,
As well as I may spend his tyme in vain.
Noli me tangere, for Cesars I ame;
And wylde for to hold, though I seme tame.

The atmosphere is far from dreamlike, thepicturesque description of the countryside has gone, and the sentiment is arrogant and cynical. To describe the pursuit of an inaccessible lady as so much time spent 'in vain” is to aim a blow at the foundation of the sentiment of 'courtly' love common to Petrarch and the Petrarchans. Wyatt takes only the idea for his hunting image and a few details from Petrarch's text. But he may have looked at thecommentaries or heard of some of the numerous different interpretations of this sonnet. All the commentators give virtually the same note on the inscriptions on the hind's collar: 'Nessun me tocchi' and 'Libera farmi al mio Cesare parve.' 'Noli me tangere quia Caesaris sum', they say, was a well-known Latin motto: it had been inscribed on the collars of Caesar's hinds, which were then set free but whichno man ever presumed to touch or harm.

Wyatt's 'Noli me tangere, for Cesars I ame' is translated not from Petrarch's text but from the motto in the margin of one of the editions. There is consequently no need to refer Wyatt's phrasing to the influence of Romanello's 'Una cerva gentil', a sonnet itself based on Petrarch's:
Tocar non lice la mia carne interaCAESARIS. Enim sum . . .

for Wyatt was drawing on the same source: the well-known story told by the commentators. This story could also have suggested to Wyatt the notion of 'Caesar's' exclusive ownership which is by no means conveyed in Petrarch's 'it has pleased Caesar to set me free'. Wyatt's hunting scene, with its lively impression of a crowdof eager rivals, is remote from the spirit of Petrarch. For, though Petrarch's whole story could be said to recount his pursuit of Laura, Sonnet 190 has none of the heat of an active pursuit, and his contemplation of Laura also appears quite solitary. Wyatt's portrait of the wild, seeming-tame lady owes nothing to Petrarc. All stress Laura's modesty.
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